The chef prepares
a special menu
for your delight, oh my
Tonight you fly
so high up
in the vanilla sky
I've had bits of this song floating through my head all day. Paul McCartney had been crooning "Vanilla Sky" since I woke to an unusually dark morning to shower and drag a razor across my face. The lyrics can almost seem poignant and relevant to certain life-situations that I have found myself in recently—if you're the mood to reflect and spend time thinking about such things. Thankfully, I'm in such a mood.
I can't remember when my last daylog was. I'm not about to go check, as it isn’t terribly relevant. What is relevant is the drastic changes that my life has taken in the past six or seven months. I will attempt to recount what has happened, if only for a basis for where I am now and a permanent record.
I am no longer in the Frozen North. The Catskill Mountains in the great state of New York is now my current residence. I live in a town of no town: it consists of a post office and a few left-over resorts from the Catskill's heyday. Strangely enough, one-fifth of just such a resort is my apartment. Two floors, one bedroom, living room, bath, kitchen, and outside my window the undulating and geologically ancient Catskill mountains forcefully lay their beauty across the horizon.
Along with the apartment, I have a treadmill, new computer, and a black/tiger cat named Maxine. As I write she casually romances my ankles.
Your life is fine
sweet and sour
unbearable great
The woman I often alluded to in my daylogs—"Beautiful Girl"—is gone. She left me in June. There isn’t much to say about it: she made a really poor and immature decision because she couldn’t confront me about things that bothered her, most notably my depression (for a good indication of this, sample my former daylogs). She stayed with me until she found someone better, and then called to say that she didn’t want to see me anymore. A week prior to the call I was at her house, interviewing for a position twenty minutes from her that she had found for me, so that we might finally live with, or at least in close proximity to, each other. A week later four years and an engagement went "ffft," and she broke my heart.
The irony of the whole situation is that losing her allowed me to realize how depressed I actually was. I had, in moving to the city to be with her, managed to alienate nearly all of my friends and family, and fall into a hole where the whole world was shit and only she gave me any sort of joy. When this terrible burden finally got the better of her, and she decided to leave me (without telling me why; I had to figure it out on my own), I came to the realization that two people cannot make a universe, and in my attempts to make one I had lost my family, friends, any sense of self, and joy. I had reached a point where I was scared to get out of bed, and woke actively hating who I was. Losing her allowed me to finally see how screwed up my life was.
As a result, I worked all summer on myself. I contacted old friends, and was delighted to find that they only smiled and said that it was good to have me back again. I also began to repair the rift that has formed between my parents and myself as a result of all my cynical and joyless crap. I began jogging, and am now a svelte (for me) 175 pounds. As I am 6'2", and have been 200+ for the past five years, this was quite a coup. I also learned how to take joy in life again, which is something that I don't think I've been able to do in a very long time.
You gotta love every hour
must appreciate
I landed a job: teaching tenth and eleventh graders the glories of writing and literature. I love working there; it is wonderful and awful and it drives me insane and makes me laugh. At times I have to remind myself that they are paying me to do it. How many people can say that? Of course, one undesirable characteristic I was unable to shake completely was my ability to procrastinate, so I sometimes still create undue stress for myself. But it is something that I'm working on, and it gets just a little better by the day.
In short, losing her allowed me to realize that I have a really great life. I have friends and family who love me, a great apartment in a beautiful part of the state, a great job (which, ironically again, she found for me), a new body (thinner), and new haircut (shorter), and the ability to actually notice these things about my life instead of focusing on any and all things wrong. This Thanksgiving, when we did the rounds of what we were thankful for, I simply said that I was thankful that I had the ability to be thankful this year, as it feels as if I haven’t been for so long.
I could tell more, but I think here is a good place to stop. I have more to catch up on—interesting experiences at two Christmas parties come to mind—but the hour is late and I have been up since before the sun. Perhaps tomorrow.
This is your time
This your day
You got it all
don't blow it away
For the first time in my life, I can actually see meaning in somthing like this.
I am alive again.